Sri Lanka to probe allegations of intelligence complicity in 2019 Islamist bombings

The Sri Lankan government on Wednesday announced that a parliamentary committee will investigate allegations made in a British television report that the island nation’s intelligence was complicit in the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 269 people, including 11 Indians.

Whistleblowers have alleged that the Sri Lankan intelligence helped plot these widely consequential attacks to create instability to assist the Rajapaksa family’s return to power in the subsequent election.

This is significant because the bombings had triggered communal hostilities and security concerns. Amid this instability, the Rajapaksas’ Sinhala nationalist political party had won the presidential polls with a campaign focussing on national security.

The attacks and Rajapaksas’ return

On April 21, 2019 – an Easter Sunday – a series of suicide bombings took place across luxury hotels and churches in capital Colombo, nearby town of Negombo and the eastern city of Batticaloa. As many as 269 people died and hundreds others were injured. This was during the government of Maithripala Sirisena – a rival of the Rajapaksas.

The Sri Lankan investigators identified the attacks’ perpetrators as domestic Islamists from the National Thowheeth Jama’ath.

This happened as the country was rebuilding itself a decade after the end of a civil war between Sri Lankan Tamil separatists and the ethnic Sinhalese-dominated government.

The bombings sparked hostilities between the Christian, Muslim and the ethnic Sinhala communities. The Sinhala, who are predominantly Theravada Buddhists, constitute nearly 75% of Sri Lanka’s population.

Consequently, national security became the main issue in the November 2019 presidential polls. Contesting on a security plank, the Rajapaksas’ Sinhala nationalist Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna party won and Gotabaya became the president – bringing the family back to power. The Rajapaksas, then led by Gotabaya’s older brother Mahinda, had lost power to the rival Sirisena-Ranil Wickremesinghe alliance in 2015.

A lasting impact

The attacks had an adverse effect on Sri Lanka’s tourism-driven economy, as tourists avoided the island nation due to security concerns. This, coupled with the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and some poor policy decisions by the Sri Lankan government, are widely seen as the key contributing factors to the country descending into its worst economic crisis.

Sri Lanka eventually declared bankruptcy in July 2022 and negotiated a bailout from Western financial institutions.

The economic crisis sparked nationwide violent protests – forcing the Rajapaksas out of power. Gotabaya fled the country in July 2022, before returning two months later.

The allegations

Now, British television channel Channel 4 has quoted whistleblowers as alleging that Sri Lanka’s intelligence service, which then reported to the Rajapaksas’ rival Sirisena, was complicit in these attacks.

The report on Tuesday featured an interview of Azad Maulana who alleged that he had arranged a meeting in 2018 between the National Thowheeth Jama’ath and Major General Suresh Sallay, a top Sri Lankan intelligence official. This was when the Sirisena government was in power. Maulana was a spokesperson of a breakaway group of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam – the main Tamil separatist outfit – that had switched sides to help the Sri Lankan government defeat the separatists in the civil war.

Maulana alleged that he arranged the meeting at the behest of his then boss Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, who leads the breakaway group that is now a political party named the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal. Chandrakanthan, who is now a minister in the current Wickremesinghe government backed by the Rajapaksas, has denied these allegations. Wickremesinghe took over the presidency amid the economic crisis in 2022 when Gotabaya resigned.

The meeting was to devise a plot to create insecurity in the country to enable Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s win in the presidential election later that year, Maulana claimed. Maulana alleged that Sallay had told him later that creating an unsafe situation in the country was the only way the Rajapaksas could return to power. Gotabaya had served as a key defence official during the civil war, when his older brother Mahinda led the government.

Maulana claimed that he recognised the attackers as those whom he had arranged to meet with Sallay when the security camera footage of the bombings was released. Sallay, who is currently the Director-General of the State Intelligence Service, has denied these allegations.

Investigators from the United Nations and European intelligence service have also interviewed Maulana regarding his allegations, Channel 4 reported.

The report quoted another unidentified “high-placed” whistleblower as alleging that the Rajapaksa government subsequently “sabotaged” the probe into the bombings.

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the Archbishop of Colombo, had in March 2022 urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate the bombings, claiming that it was “not purely a work of extremists, but a grand political plot.” Ranjith was also featured in the Channel 4 report.

Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa has called for an international probe into the bombings. “A large majority of the people are of the view that a fair local investigation has not been conducted into this attack,” Premadasa told parliament on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Gotabaya rejected the allegations, calling the report an “anti-Rajapaksa tirade”. “To claim that a group of Islamic extremists launched suicide attacks in order to make me president, is absurd,” Gotabaya said. “This story about Maj Gen Sallay meeting the suicide bombers in February 2018 is clearly a fabrication.”